Summer Institute for Scholars - 2014

2014 IIIT Summer Institute for ScholarsCall for Papers“Islamic Law and Ethics”​

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) invites abstract submissions for its 7th Summer Institute for Scholars, which will be held between June 16 and June 21, 2014, at its headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, USA. The Summer Institute is an annual meeting dedicated to the study of contemporary approaches to Islamic thought, that brings together senior and young scholars in order to present papers and participate in panels and informal discussions focused on topics related to a particular theme.

The theme of this year’s program is “Islamic Law and Ethics”. While the scope of Islamic Jurisprudence (fiqh) covers, broadly speaking, two areas of human-God (‘ibadat) and human-human (mu’amalat) relations, ethics (akhlaq) undergirds the entire value system of the Shari’ah. Throughout its history Islamic jurisprudence has been guided by the Shar’i normative system that has enabled jurists at different times to provide fresh rulings by engaging the ethical foundation of these norms and apply them to the changed circumstances of everyday life of Muslim societies. The growingfatawa literature bears testimony to the ever expanding horizons of human needs to be guided by the spiritual and moral values embedded in Islamic revelation. With the development of secular ethics that generally denies a role to religious ethics to guide moral life of the people today, scholars need to reexamine the fundamental aspects of Islamic ethics – both in theory and in application, and the ways in which Muslim jurists in the past have incorporated essentially ethical dimension of Islamic jurisprudence in their legal methodology. Whether the jurists promote ijtihad al-’aqli (reason based investigation) or ijtihad al-shar’i (revealed text based investigation); or whether they support maqasid-based (objectives-based) ijtihad, they have, explicitly or implicitly, attended to the ethical values that are enshrined in the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

This year’s theme, then, invites abstracts that investigate this critical relationship between legal and ethical dimensions of Islamic jurisprudence, by exploring the legal-ethical rationale (‘illa) and the objective circumstantial evidence (mawdu’), to establish the framework of Islamic moral thought and practice in the Shari’ah. The academic objective of the program is to show with evidence scriptural ethics in Islamic religious thought that is operative in the new fields of problem resolution, touching the innovative fields of education in humanities and social sciences, as well as in applied sciences in the fields of medicine, engineering, business, environmental studies, and technology in general.

Topics for submissions for this Summer Institute may include:

Relationship between legal and ethical in the Islamic revelation;

The contours of legal-ethical methodology (usul al-fiqh) in Islamic jurisprudence;

Case Studies of Applied Ethics in Various Fields (political and social ethics; biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, business ethics, ethics of technology, banking and finance).

Deadline for abstracts is March 15, 2014. Decisions will be made by late March. Final papers are due on May 15, 2014. Funding is contingent on full paper submission. Abstracts should not be longer than 500 words. Final paper should be at least 6,000 words, and not exceed 10,000 words.The Institute will convene on June 16, and will conclude on June 21, 2014. Participants should expect to arrive to Herndon, VA, on June 15 and depart on June 22.

IIIT will publish selected papers in an edited volume, within one year after the Seminar.

IIIT will cover travel cost (from continental US and Canada), will provide hotel accommodation for scholars with accepted papers, and will pay each scholar a per diem of $100 for participation.

Inquiries and abstracts should be addressed to Ermin Sinanović, Director of Research and Academic Programs, via email at ermin@iiit.org.